{"id":128321,"date":"2021-09-29T23:24:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T06:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/an-autonomous-robot-may-have-already-killed-people-heres-how-the-weapons-could-be-more-destabilizing-than-nukes"},"modified":"2021-09-29T23:24:22","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T06:24:22","slug":"an-autonomous-robot-may-have-already-killed-people-heres-how-the-weapons-could-be-more-destabilizing-than-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/an-autonomous-robot-may-have-already-killed-people-heres-how-the-weapons-could-be-more-destabilizing-than-nukes","title":{"rendered":"An autonomous robot may have already killed people \u2014 here\u2019s how the weapons could be more destabilizing than nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/an-autonomous-robot-may-have-already-killed-people-heres-how-the-weapons-could-be-more-destabilizing-than-nukes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Autonomous weapon systems \u2013 commonly known as killer robots \u2013 may have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2021\/06\/01\/1002196245\/a-u-n-report-suggests-libya-saw-the-first-battlefield-killing-by-an-autonomous-d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">killed human beings for the first time ever<\/a> last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council <a href=\"https:\/\/undocs.org\/S\/2021\/229\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">report on the Libyan civil war<\/a>. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity\u2019s final one.<\/p>\n<p>Autonomous weapon systems are robots with lethal weapons that can operate independently, selecting and attacking targets without a human weighing in on those decisions. Militaries around the world are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2021\/09\/24\/us-only-nation-ethical-standards-ai-weapons-should-we-afraid-1628986.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">investing heavily<\/a> in autonomous weapons research and development. The U.S. alone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/dont-let-robots-pull-the-trigger\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">budgeted US$18 billion<\/a> for autonomous weapons between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, human rights and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stopkillerrobots.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">humanitarian organizations<\/a> are racing to establish regulations and prohibitions on such weapons development. Without such checks, foreign policy experts warn that disruptive autonomous weapons technologies will dangerously destabilize current nuclear strategies, both because they could radically change perceptions of strategic dominance, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rand.org\/blog\/2020\/06\/the-risks-of-autonomous-weapons-systems-for-crisis.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">increasing the risk of preemptive attacks<\/a>, and because they could become <a href=\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2020\/10\/14\/ai-drones-swarms-killer-robots-partial-ban-on-autonomous-weapons-would-make-everyone-safer\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">combined with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons<\/a> themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autonomous weapon systems \u2013 commonly known as killer robots \u2013 may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,9,31,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-military","category-policy","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}